


Silent Speak

by sinisterkid92



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, Future Fic, Lucy Flynn friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 06:38:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10183088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: Set about 6-10 months after the season 1 finale."Instead, she’d watched him as he slowly undressed and redressed himself. He did it silently, like he did most things these days. A heavy vacuum of noise that weighed down on the air around him. It was cold, and just like a black hole it dragged her in. She was in his orbit no matter if she liked it or not, drawn towards him even though it was sure destruction of her.There was something beautiful about his stillness. To know her own family’s role in his heartbreak often made her feel like she didn’t belong around him. Her very existence was due to the organisation that killed his family. His child. She almost felt perverse watching him zip the hoodie up, a voyeur to his tragedy. "





	

She watched him from afar. Or, as a far as the cramped space of the cabin in the woods would allow. For once they’re in the 21st century after what felt like a marathon over weeks and weeks trying to repair the damage that Rittenhouse was doing to history. Rittenhouse had the upper hand after years of research into the very things they wanted to change, by having the key at the back of the book to look at instead of tediously searching for answers that would probably never reveal themselves. 

Now Rittenhouse was silent. 

There was something ominous about it. Like they were preparing themselves to hail down the mightiest of storms. Yet, there was nothing the four of them could do about it but wait it out. 

The hours immediately following the return trip was as chaotic as they always were. Because two people had to stay behind on each trip the first thing they needed to do was debrief each other. The two people who stayed would move their base of operations to a new location, doing their best to keep themselves off the radar. While Agent Christopher and Mason were reluctantly on their side after discovering that Rittenhouse hadn’t gone belly-up following their 1950s trip, that relationship was tenuous at best. It provided no shelter against the organization they were fighting, and none of them trusted Homeland Security either at this point. Christopher could keep the manhunt off them, but could not promise protection, or that if they ever did turn up that they wouldn’t be arrested.

It was safest to stay away.

After scrambling around getting everything in order to do another time jump they had soon found themselves with nothing to do. More clothes than they would ever be able to go through, no matter how long they time traveled, was stuffed in the cabin she sat in, and she could see the computer screens that Jiya and Rufus were working on in the neighboring cabin through the window.

She was left in this cabin with Flynn. It wasn’t exactly planned this way, but in her exhaustion she had fallen back on the bottom bunk of a bed and not found the energy to get back up. Instead, she’d watched him as he slowly undressed and redressed himself. He did it silently like he did most things these days. A heavy vacuum of noise that weighed down on the air around him. It was cold, and just like a black hole it dragged her in. She was in his orbit no matter if she liked it or not, drawn towards him even though it was sure destruction of her.

There was something beautiful about his stillness. To know her own family’s role in his heartbreak often made her feel like she didn’t belong around him. Her very existence was due to the organization that killed his family. His child. She almost felt perverse watching him zip the hoodie up, a voyeur to his tragedy. 

“Have you finished staring?” he asked her, without turning around. Once it would have startled her that he knew she was there without looking. Now she knew him, knew all along that he’d known she was there. None of them were concerned with modesty anymore, not after months of living in cramped spaces in present and past times. There had been nothing sexual about seeing his naked back, or thighs. Still, she had averted her eyes as he changed underwear to be polite. They’d seen it all, heard it all. 

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. She knew she was being rude, and there was nothing she hadn’t seen him do already before. Yet, the silence that had passed between them for months and months had still not become comfortable so looking at him was the only way she could have any connection with the man. Having him be such an integral part of her life without actually knowing him bugged her. A lot. She knew the cliff notes of his past, but the rest were a mystery. She suspected he’d already figured her out with the help of the book and her eager willingness to share herself with the world. 

“I’m going to sleep, anyway.” He said it as he flipped the hood of the jacket up to shield him from the light drizzle outside. As he walked past her to get through the piles of clothes that had been piled onto every surface available in the room she thought for a second how young he looked in the 21st. Back then he was old, but here he was in the middle of his life, still young and vibrant. A flash of a young Flynn twenty years ago flipping up a hoodie just like he did now passed through her mind and gripped at her heart. Her family had broken him.   
“Bunk,” she responded, for a moment feeling too drained to elaborate, but since he barely even paused in his step she had to continue. “There’s only two cabins this time. Jiya and Rufus are sharing a bed, and Wyatt refuses to share a cabin with you after what happened.” It didn’t need to be explained what had happened. The two men had nearly started pounding on each other immediately prior to their most recent trip. She didn’t know exactly what it had been about, and she didn’t care at this point. It probably had no real reason beyond the brewing tension between the two men since they first met. 

That made him pause in his steps. “So we’re sharing a bunk bed?” He didn’t sound impressed with the idea, and Lucy managed to gather enough energy to shrug her shoulders. He looked the bed over. “Get up.” She glared at him.

“Are you serious?” Whatever fight had been left hanging with Wyatt seemed to be brought to life in this cabin again. This time with her. “I’m exhausted Flynn, just… go to bed.” 

“I’m 6 foot 4 Lucy, every time I move that bed is going to rock, and then we both get seasick.” He said it like it was something she was supposed to have figured out already which admittedly, she had. Resisting the urge to stomp her feet in protest, her exhaustion making her feel 4 and not 34, she crawled out of bed and stood on her feet. 

The cramped space in the cabin had the two of them standing mere inches from each other as she stood. It was the closest she had been to him in months, now completely encompassed by the vacuum of emotions that always seemed to surround him. There, with her feet touching his she could almost feel the depth of the emotions that were screaming inside of him, and she was hit not for the first time with the longing to soothe his aches and wounds. Something about him had woken the nurturing side of her, a feeling that before had felt foreign and belonging to other women and other people who were far more admirable than her. 

She placed a careful hand on his chest, just above his heart. Touching him was a new thing. It had always been him touching her, roughly pulling her along or pushing her out of the way. He didn’t protest, so she tilted her head up to look at him. For the first time speak to him.

“I’m sorry Garcia,” she whispered. “I really didn’t know.” There were so many things that she had been ignorant about, and she should have known better. Of course, Agent Christopher would follow her to Flynn. Of course, Rittenhouse was bigger than a room full of files her grandfather had collected. That her own family had been a part of Rittenhouse was unforgivable of her not to know. Had it only been her biological father that would have been something she’d forgive herself for not knowing, but her mother’s role in it was something else. How could she have missed that? 

When they’d rescued him from a black site in the middle of nowhere America he was nothing like the man that Homeland Security had dragged away from her. The strength of his emotions and conviction had wilted, leaving only a shell of a man who was hard to convince to even move, let alone fight with them against Rittenhouse. It had taken a long time for them to convince him that they’d been as blindsided by it all as him. Now they were all fighting on the same side, for the same thing. Maybe one day that would mean his wife and daughter would come back but gone were the days of determination. Left was a small glimmer of hope they could only see on the good days. 

“It’s not your fault.” His voice was rough like it always was when he lowered his voice and didn’t hide behind theatrics and lies. That voice was the one where she knew he was telling the truth. He was being vulnerable like her. For once they were equal. 

“But it is,” she argued, staring at her hand on his chest. “I should have known.” 

“And my family would still be dead.” His hand rested over hers on his chest, his thumb brushing against the skin between her thumb and forefinger. “Lucy, my anger is not at you, it’s at everything.” He exhaled, ruffling the hair at the top of her head with the force of it. “I’m sorry that I took that out on you.”

“And Wyatt,” she added.

A smile pulled at the corner of his lips. “Not so sure I’m sorry about that.” The joke made her chuckle, but she didn’t have the energy or emotional strength to manage anything more than that. “For the longest time, I didn’t let myself grieve because I thought that meant I was giving up on my family, and now that I understand how… unlikely it is that I will ever see them again I don’t know what to do with myself.” He gasped at the thought of it, clutching her hand tighter in his. “I don’t know how to grieve them.”

She stepped that last millimeter closer to him, into his space, lifting her hand from his chest to his face. 

“Stop fighting it, that’s where you start.” She brushed a strand of his hair that was getting too long behind his ear, telling herself to remember to cut his hair for him the next day. “You’re not alone anymore Garcia. I’m here for you.” Though they’d been through much she knew she could trust him, and she could trust him enough to let him lean against her whenever he needed to, for however long that would be. “You don’t have to be strong all the time.” 

He let out a shaky breath, then he fell into her. His large body falling against her own had her stumbling back a few steps, but she quickly found her balance, wrapping her arms around his body tight as he wrapped his around hers. There his body shook with quiet sobs he would never give sounds to. Maybe he did not even shed a tear, Lucy thought, but that did not matter.

For once the silence he surrounded himself with was not guarded and distant. It was broken piece by piece in her arms as he finally wept for the life he’d lost forever.


End file.
